Zach Beauvais

hmmm LinkedIn, like lots of other sites, seems to put function/form almost as a statement of ethos. But, looking at your screenshot of the iphone app, I can't help but think that the form IS part of the function—all the more with a "social" application. So, if people are the point (and, in what app are they not?), why are they the final consideration in the actual development of the site? On the iPhone, you have to take them into consideration, because it simply won't be used if it's not very much attuned to the way people work. I'd love to see sites/webapps designed much more like an iphone app... usable and lovely from all perspectives, with no need to hearken to a bunch of text links or otherwise. Good post, btw ;) - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Wow, those look great! Did you have to go and add more to my reading list, however? A Short History of Nearly Everything's also a great read, if on a slightly different angle...noticed that in the comments and wanted to bump it. - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

I wish more organisations and businesses took such care, especially such an active care for society. I feel privileged to work in the web industry, and feel it's minds are some of the sharpest on the planet. It's heart-warming to see them starting to apply some of that to making this place better for everyone! - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

I wish more organisations and businesses took such care, especially such an active care for society. I feel privileged to work in the web industry, and feel it's minds are some of the sharpest on the planet. It's heart-warming to see them starting to apply some of that to making this place better for everyone! - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

I know this service is designed to be used "programmatically" (i.e. used by software rather than executed by hand by a person), it does show an incredible potential to a general user. I did this for my own site, and the results were mixed, as reflects a beta trial. Also, they don't YET produce dereferencable URI's for the data (though, as Paul Miller over on ZDNet pointed out: it's on it's way). I think as soon as a user can fill in the simple web form, and receive a working RDF graph of their site, it will be incredibly exciting! - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

I know this service is designed to be used "programmatically" (i.e. used by software rather than executed by hand by a person), it does show an incredible potential to a general user. I did this for my own site, and the results were mixed, as reflects a beta trial. Also, they don't YET produce dereferencable URI's for the data (though, as Paul Miller over on ZDNet pointed out: it's on it's way). I think as soon as a user can fill in the simple web form, and receive a working RDF graph of their site, it will be incredibly exciting! - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

I know this service is designed to be used "programmatically" (i.e. used by software rather than executed by hand by a person), it does show an incredible potential to a general user. I did this for my own site, and the results were mixed, as reflects a beta trial. Also, they don't YET produce dereferencable URI's for the data (though, as Paul Miller over on ZDNet pointed out: it's on it's way). I think as soon as a user can fill in the simple web form, and receive a working RDF graph of their site, it will be incredibly exciting! - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Sorry, I'm not entirely how that posted three times... the FriendFeed was sending my comments to someone elses' feed, however, so might be a good idea to reset it? Strange... - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Sorry, I'm not entirely how that posted three times... the FriendFeed was sending my comments to someone elses' feed, however, so might be a good idea to reset it? Strange... - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

I know this service is designed to be used "programmatically" (i.e. used by software rather than executed by hand by a person), it does show an incredible potential to a general user. I did this for my own site, and the results were mixed, as reflects a beta trial. Also, they don't YET produce dereferencable URI's for the data (though, as Paul Miller over on ZDNet pointed out: it's on it's way). I think as soon as a user can fill in the simple web form, and receive a working RDF graph of their site, it will be incredibly exciting! - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

I know this service is designed to be used "programmatically" (i.e. used by software rather than executed by hand by a person), it does show an incredible potential to a general user. I did this for my own site, and the results were mixed, as reflects a beta trial. Also, they don't YET produce dereferencable URI's for the data (though, as Paul Miller over on ZDNet pointed out: it's on it's way). I think as soon as a user can fill in the simple web form, and receive a working RDF graph of their site, it will be incredibly exciting! - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

I know this service is designed to be used "programmatically" (i.e. used by software rather than executed by hand by a person), it does show an incredible potential to a general user. I did this for my own site, and the results were mixed, as reflects a beta trial. Also, they don't YET produce dereferencable URI's for the data (though, as Paul Miller over on ZDNet pointed out: it's on it's way). I think as soon as a user can fill in the simple web form, and receive a working RDF graph of their site, it will be incredibly exciting! - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Wow, loads of responses: Gmail Twitter Wordpress With Facebook, google maps, and many more sort of jumbled up at number 4. - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

ClosedID anyone? Why can't anyone support open standards in this area? How much better would it be if whenever you added a friend to ANY service, all other services knew? - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

;) Love it! I'll remember that the next time my wife asks if I really need that fourth coffee... -Z - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Rich, Brilliant piece. I think a big part of the 'let down' feeling might have to do with a mistaken belief that blogging will have cured media from everything it's suffered for the past century and more. It's like alternative music or underground photography: everything can be commercialised and anything can be bought and spun. There will be more wheat and chaff to come, and, eventually, the best content, the best writers, and the best-edited blogs will still have followers. But, as the public adopt blogs as a medium to content with the "mainstream", it'll take on more of the problems and features of the wider media. - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Rich, Brilliant piece. I think a big part of the 'let down' feeling might have to do with a mistaken belief that blogging will have cured media from everything it's suffered for the past century and more. It's like alternative music or underground photography: everything can be commercialised and anything can be bought and spun. There will be more wheat and chaff to come, and, eventually, the best content, the best writers, and the best-edited blogs will still have followers. But, as the public adopt blogs as a medium to content with the "mainstream", it'll take on more of the problems and features of the wider media. - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Stephen, personally I don't think an association or regulation for blogging will work. It's been tried at least a couple of times before, and akaik failed both times. I think it gets back to Ouriel's point, that blogging and journalism overlap so much these days, it is all "media" when it comes down to it. Each blogger has their own standard of ethics, ranging from the Izea proponents to the journalistic ethics of most leading pro blogs. - Richard via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Very topical and great food for thought! Being a relative newcomer to blogging, I can see how this is becoming an issue. I cannot see how micro blogging will ever replace bloging. Every second micro post I read on twitter is simply a link to a blog post somewhere else! - Luke Harvey-Palmer via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Hi, Sarah. I had some thoughts, but many of them were already covered in the comments ;) Calendar sync should be table-stakes—it's something we've needed since the dawn of computing, and has been available in different forms for ages. It just hasn't been implemented very well yet. Is this the future? No, it's making up for the past. We will see this everywhere soon, and everything will be synced by default. I'm just surprised it's taken so long. - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Very cool. I'm going to have to play with this and possibly integrate into my website. - Justin Korn

Now this is something I`ve been waiting for. Not only that I offers a nice slideshow, especially the fullscreen option is useful since many screenshots posted on flickr are barely readable if not displayed in a high resolution. - Egbert via FriendFeed MT Plugin

What a brilliant UI! I can imagine this kind of flow/expand working well for lots of apps, not just photo-viewing. Imagine finding docs, pdfs, or colour palettes this way. I could even see it on a mobile for finding contacts, albums, or whatever. It just needs to be that slight bit faster (which I'd have though it could be for low-res imaging?) and I'd prefer it over cover-flow. - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Agree with 3, PicLens already does an amazing job at enhancing the experience of surfing photo albums online - xavier vespa via FriendFeed MT Plugin

What a brilliant UI! I can imagine this kind of flow/expand working well for lots of apps, not just photo-viewing. Imagine finding docs, pdfs, or colour palettes this way. I could even see it on a mobile for finding contacts, albums, or whatever. It just needs to be that slight bit faster (which I'd have though it could be for low-res imaging?) and I'd prefer it over cover-flow. - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

Rob, That's brilliant! I have been reading quite a lot in the cloud computing meme recently. The company I work for is SaaS Semantic Web (Talis.com), so it's pretty relevant too. I can't now shake the image of a velociraptor with an iPhone wondering when his appointment at the dentist was—picking his teeth with the bone of his 10:00! I worry about your anxiety during power outages, though... ever thought of having some chamomile just before switching on the computer? All the best, - Zach Beauvais via FriendFeed MT Plugin

"My new, low-spec dell is barely able to run Vista, and it came pre-installed. There is not enough RAM, and the onboard graphics are not capable of running Aero without serious lags. It wasn't just Vista Capable, but built for Windows Vista... or was it?" - Zach Beauvais

"Exactly, the money isn't in the long tail (at least not more than 20%). You need a long lever to leverage that kind of bulk. Amazon began growing its lever by adding more and more books and features, as they grew. They are now a platform, which supports a long tail. You need clout, a well-thought-out business model, and scalability to get money from the tail. You also can't aim too far down the tail-Amazon still sells the top ten after all!" - Zach Beauvais

"I actually interviewed AdaptiveBlue, and asked them about how they feel Smartlinks are Semantic, amongst other things. They were very helpful and offered quite a bit of information on semantic web, Web 3.0 (as a buzzword, they're not particularly keen at the moment), and adoption of smartlinks. You can view it here: http://zachbeauvais.com/node/7..." - Zach Beauvais

"People vote more often for more popular content because more people (by definition) see more popular content more often. Unless there is a list of less popular (an inverse-square Digg), the most popular items will always appear. I don't see the problem, really, though I do agree that Digg's front page has degraded in (my favourite, opinionated, and personal) quality content. I use Digg more as a social network (by reading friends' Dugg articles, commenting, and linking back to interesting articles) than a front-page landing place. In fact, it has been probably six months since I last saw digg.com as an actual page. The perspective is important, as is how an individual uses the tool which hasn't actually changed. It has only become more popular, which scares and annoys some people (often, myself included). Regards" - Zach Beauvais

"I think the gPhone should have been the iPhone. The hardware/software of the iPhone will probably be top-tier for some time to come, and Google is the best Internet phenomenon around. http://www.zachbeauvais.com/no... is what I thought at first. What do you reckon?" - Zach Beauvais

"At Point 2, Google is always in a constant state of Beta. Beta has become a marketing phrase more than almost anything else. Look at most Web2.0 startups, and you'll see a starburst 'Beta' next to the shiny logo. I have been a Google fan since the 90's and have had Gmail since I could wrangle an invite, so I'm not a foe (not only that, but with the cost and annoyance of Office 2003 not running properly on my new Vista Machine...!) but I am concerned that Google keeps everything it can on record. Everything is searchable (the whole point of Google-searching your archived Gmails...) which leads me to question the ability for Google to keep Data Protection working for companies with sensitive data. Imagine your entire spreadsheet of email subscribers leaking *shudder*! Regards, (http://www.zachbeauvais.com)" - Zach Beauvais